Contra Bellum
by BookSerpentess
Summary: ON HIATUS. I'm not blind; I can see prejudice comes from both sides of a war. I can see how it wreathes people with its vicious claws, into something ugly and hateful, and takes lives away. Human flaw can be fatal. Edith Malfoy is on a quest to find the remains of her family and conquer the obstacles in the way. EWE, not DH compatible.


Disclaimer: I do not own any part of the Harry Potter universe except the main character and other future characters made by myself.

Summary: _I grew up with war, in a world of war. I hate it, the way people choose to hate and be prejudiced for pointless reasons. I'm not blind; I can see prejudice comes from both sides of a war. I can see how it wreaths people with vicious claws, into something ugly and hateful, and takes lives away. Human flaw can be fatal. It's the thing that causes wars. Prejudice, hate, greed… _Edith Malfoy is on a quest to find the remains of her family and conquer the obstacles in the way.

A/N: This isn't really your average Dramione fanfic. All couples are in the background; except for Dramione, which will surface in the point of view of the main character only unless I change my mind. This story is mainly about the value of a family, the main character's angsty teenage feelings, and the viciousness of war and its reality. I'll be updating whenever I can and/or have inspiration to actually write. ^^

Please review and favourite and follow? Please? It doesn't take _that_ much time.

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"When everything goes to hell, the people who stand by you without flinching _– _they are your family. "

- Jim Butcher

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_10 June 2015_

_My name is Edith Eltanin Beatrice Malfoy, the sole daughter of Draco Lucius Malfoy and Hermione Jean Granger, born on the 22__nd__ of May 2000. _

She stopped, frowning, not sure about how to continue. Then she sighed, pressing the quill back to the parchment and went on.

_I have the exact same shape and color of eyes as my father, along with most of his sharp, aristocratic features. I've inherited the Malfoy smirk, Dad's scowl and his special brooding look, his smile (which is a rarity, among other people, as is mine), his strut, his walk, a few of his habits, and his intimidating stare. I have only my mother's hair (only much less bushy), and her nose – or so they tell me – on my face. I love books, and my father told me, in one of his nostalgic moods when tucking me up before bed, that my mother was obsessed with them. He loves books, too, although he never ever admits it no matter how much you push, and he reads me excerpts from classics all the time, when he visits the Order safe house I stay in. A particular favourite of mine is _Pride and Prejudice_. I loved it very much, and when I told him so, he said, quietly, "Your mother favoured it, too," with this solemn look on his face. The look he wears when struck with a memory of my mother and his face is expressionless, minus his eyes, which would turn into mercurial pools of silver, with the depth that tells you he's seen too much. I'd seen a faint gleam in his eyes, as if tears were pooling, just before he'd bent to kiss my forehead and stood up and turned away. _

_You see, my mother is missing. She could be dead for all I know. I've never met her, and it's bad enough to have one parent missing – my father has an important role in the Order and spends most of his time either sketching out strategies or cracking his head over my mother's current location when he's not keeping me company. Thus, mostly I was raised by Grandmother Narcissa, Uncle Blaise, my father's best friend and my godfather, and Aunt Ginny, my godmother and my mother's best friend. _

_My mother doesn't know I exist. When they – Dad, Uncle Blaise, and Aunt Ginny – told me that, I was confused. How can a mother give birth to a child and not know? But then they told me – when they'd sat me down at nine years old as at that age I'd grown so petulant about wanting to know where the hell my mother was and whether I even had a mother and why everybody was avoiding the topic and since they deemed I was old enough – that she was Obliviated of my existence, that she thought I'd been murdered. She thought Dad was dead, too. How did this happen? _

_A month and a half after I was born, Death Eaters struck the safe house my family was at, alone with only Blaise Zabini, and Grandfather Lucius with us. We were just about to leave the safe house when it happened. My family went into panic, frantically casting spells, striking down some Death Eaters. _

_But then Grandfather collapsed. Dead. Dad went into a furious rage, bringing down two Death Eaters, but it wasn't enough. They were still overwhelmed. My mother was screaming, casting _Avada Kedavra_s left and right, hexes here and there, and in her fury she thrust me – a wailing baby, distracting her – into Dad's arms and told him to leave. He refused, and gave me to Uncle Blaise and told him to leave. He did. My parents were just about to leave after him, but a Death Eater snatched my mother, Body-Binded her, and threatened to kill her if Dad didn't hand his wand over. He did. _

_They didn't give any details to me, but they said that my mother had immediately been Obliviated and made to believe that I died in childbirth, and made to forget about something else – Dad didn't know what, _I didn't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't_, he'd chocked, crushing me into his embrace while I sobbed too – and then they left. Disapparated. But not before they'd taken hold of my Dad and Apparated him elsewhere, where they beat him up before pushing his own Portkey into his hand, which dumped him in an Order safe house. Immediately, he'd demanded to be Healed, because he couldn't get up, each move made him wince in pain, and snarled that he needed to see me, whether I was safe, and when he was Healed enough to stand up, he Apparated immediately to the place we'd been attacked, not heeding Madame Pomfrey's instructions. My mother was gone. Gone, with a note from her lying desolate on the floor , among a small heap of Death Eaters' bodies– _

' _To the Order – They dared take my daughter and husband away from me, they dared twist my husband into something so… evil, before he died. Just like them. I grieve for him, I grieve for her. I will avenge them. I will. I will. HJG-M' _

_Dad showed me the paper. He told me that after the many charms cast across it to check if my mother had really written it, the note was proved it was from her. I was confused. Why did mother call my father such a name? But after the Order had put my Dad in a cell for questioning, they found him innocent and not guilty of any evil actions. They conceded, let him go, and theorised that the Death Eaters had planted a false memory in my mother's head. _

_So it seems my mother has gone chasing Death Eaters down, deluded and betrayed and angry and heartbroken, determined for revenge. Indeed, random deaths of Death Eaters had been reported all throughout Magical Britain, but when the Order came to the scene, my mother was nowhere to be found, and she had left no traces. _Damn her carefulness_, Dad had said, dragging a hand across his eyes, _I just wish, once, she'd forget about it. Anything to know where she is. Anything. _I agreed. _

_I didn't really feel that odd. It was all I ever knew, having a loving father who tried his best to visit at least every four days, and having two women as mother figures in my life. But sometimes I always wonder, with a slight pang in my chest, what it would be like, to have a mother to be there, looking after me and being there for me and to have a mother to love and receive motherly affection in return. Grandmother Narcissa is wonderful and really the best, don't get me wrong, but… it's just not the same, I guess. And Aunt Ginny's nice, and she's wonderful, but she's also got three kids, mainly Lily Luna, the youngest, to look after. That takes up a lot of her time. Not to mention she goes out for raids whenever she gets the chance (she gets sick of staying at home easily). _

_Dad's done his best trying to raise me properly. As his daughter and being really in-tune to his feelings and what he's thinking – that means I can read him very easily, which Uncle Blaise says the only other people who can do that are Mum and Grandmother and occasionally himself – I know he's got a few doubts about raising a kid properly to grow up happily. Well, I understand his doubts now that I'm older, but he's the perfect Dad. I appreciate his efforts a lot. He's the best father I could ever wish for and I tell him so. _

_I know Dad loves Mum very much – heck, 'very much' is an understatement of how he feels about her. I can see it in his eyes, whenever he tells me about her or when someone brings her up. Once, when I was seven, I got him to tell me their story. He resisted at first, but he can never deny me much, so naturally I won. So he sighed, settled down comfortably, and told me. I can remember everything he said, right till this day. I think it's the most vivid memory I have of my early years. _

"_We hated each other at first," he said, eyes staring at the wall opposite but not really looking," I'd been brought up to hate Muggle-borns, and I was a Slytherin and she a Gryffindor, so we were prejudiced against one another." He smirked. "We'd exchange insults whenever we caught sight of each other. She was very witty – of course, I was too. She was the top of our class, and when I saw in first year that she was actually very intelligent, I was puzzled. My father had told me that Muggle-borns were the direct opposite of clever. He seemed to be wrong, and I'd idolized him at the time. This knowledge that he was wrong and I didn't want to admit that he was made me hate her all the more. And then in Fourth year, at the Yule Ball, she was beautiful. Gone were her rabbit teeth and bushy, annoying-looking hair; she looked the same, but at the same time different. This made me even more confused. Father'd said that Muggle-borns were ugly. He was wrong. Again. This made me detest her existence." Dad paused, and frowned. "And at the beginning of Sixth year, we kept coming across each other in the library. All the time. I'd been looking frantically for a way to solve the assignment the Dark Lord had given me – " at that age I'd already known everything about my Dad's Death Eater life and his later defection – "and I grew more scared by the day. Hermione was curious about what I was doing, spending more time in the library than was usual, and one day after our usual verbal fights she was direct and asked me straight out, 'What are you doing, Malfoy?' I didn't want to answer her, I merely snapped at her to stay out of my business. But she kept on and on asking, everyday and every time, so I ditched the library and visited late, late at night. But no, this wasn't enough, avoiding her." He snickered. _

"_She came after me every single time the corridors were empty, or tracked me down at the Astronomy Tower where I usually went to think, and kept on persisting with her questions. A month and a half after that, something in me snapped, and I told her. Spilt everything out to her. When I was done and finished and she was staring at me, I threatened her not to tell her little friends. She told me she hadn't been planning to. That was weird. Very weird. Why wouldn't she use this knowledge that I was a Death Eater against me? To blackmail me or something or tell Dumbledore? I asked her why, but she didn't answer, and simply walked off. We started meeting at the Astronomy Tower, just silent, not talking at all. I could tell she was torn between telling my secret and her own compassion, but the latter clearly persisted. Two weeks after the meetings started, we kissed, after an argument about something to do with prejudice, and then our… thing… grew romantic. It became a clandestine affair, and a distraction from my duties, but when love overcame desire, I tried to break it off. It didn't succeed. Our love was… like an intense, consuming drug. Overpowering and strong and so infinite and so deep it felt so right even when it was wrong, we were on opposing sides, we were supposed to be enemies but we were defying that, and we liked it. Being rebellious for a change instead of letting prejudice overcome everything. We kept it secret for a while, just between us, but, the day I had to kill Dumbledore, I fled with Snape. We didn't contact each other for five months, but during that time it was impossible, because we were being hunted by both sides. We laid low. Snape protected me and guided me, and he told me the truth of his loyalties. That he really was on the Order's side. I was conflicted – my parents were on the Dark Lord's side, but Hermione was on the other. I couldn't just abandon my parents, no matter how strong my feelings were for her. Family came first, it was one of the things that I'd been taught as a child and I preferred to stay true to that, nevermind how much it was of a struggle. _

"_But then we heard of my parents' defection from the Death Eaters. They had joined the Order. They wanted help looking for me, worried for me, so worried they had _defected_ for me. I was shocked, but relieved, and confused that the Order accepted them into its ranks. Finally I told Snape that I wanted to defect, too. It wasn't easy, going to one of the safe houses. The Order were suspicious of us both, and they imprisoned us in cells for two months, going through our heads again and again and again and giving us Veritaserum to know our true loyalties. We came clean, and Hermione and I reunited. We fought together, with the Order, two of the best strategists they had." Dad swallowed, turning his head away. "Later we got married, on the 23__rd__ of May 1999." He stopped then, his lips pursed. _

_I remember my eyes going wide, stunned. Dad had never talked so much before, so much about his past. I appreciated that he trusted me very much, enough to bare his soul to me. It was uncharacteristic of him, but, after all, I _am_ his daughter. After he'd told me the story, I'd crawled into his lap and we had hugged each other, hard, my nose pushed into his chest, full of his comforting smell of leather and something metallic and peppery. _

_It's my favourite memory, and I cherish it down to this day. _

_It's my all-time favourite story, the way my parents got together. I think it's beautiful – they way they fell in love, overcoming the barriers of prejudice and proving the world wrong, that two people from two different words could have something so beautiful. _

_I only wish I had my mother with me, to be together with my dad right now, and for us to be a proper family. I wish she'd come back from her pointless quest for revenge. I hate the Death Eaters who stole her memory. They had stolen a huge part of her. They had no right. _

_I grew up with war, in a world of war. I hate it, the way people choose to hate and be prejudiced for pointless reasons. I'm not blind; I can see prejudice comes from both sides of a war. I can see how it wreaths people with vicious claws, into something ugly and hateful, and takes lives away. Human flaw can be fatal. It's the thing that causes wars. Prejudice, hate, greed… _

Lifting her quill, Edith looked away and stared into the distance, casting her mind back to her memories.


End file.
